Linux/Win version incompatibility? // no picutres

[mrblue23]

Hi,
at home I usually work with openoffice under ubuntu 8.04 64bit. but now i have to use windows - which as i thought shouldn't be a problem as there is a windows version of oOo. But there's a problem: i have some eps-picutres within the document i'm working at, and instead of the pictures the win-version of oOo just shows name and creation-details of the picture in red letters. is there a solution to this problem?

[mrblue23]

ok, i think it doensn't have anything to do with the linux-oOo. Newly inserted eps-picutres cause the same trouble.

[acknak]

What you see in Writer is a "preview" of the EPS graphic. The preview is an optional part of the EPS file; if no preview is available, all you see is the outline.

If the preview is not included in the EPS file, OOo can use two (Free/Open-Source) software packages, Ghostscript and ImageMagick, to generate a preview of the graphic "on the fly". If there is no preview, and no way to generate one, OOo shows you only the red outline.

Those two packages are commonly installed as standard with Linux systems; they are available for Windows, but not often installed.

If you want to see the preview in Windows (it's not strictly necessary to have a preview), you need to either install the two packages, or convert the EPS file to include a preview image, before you insert it into your Writer document.

[mrblue23]

ok, thanks for the answer. so when i print a oOo file that contains a eps-picture, does it print the actual eps-picture or just the preview? i'm asking this because an exported oOo-writer-file (pdf) did not include the actual pictures either.

[acknak]

Yes, good questions. The answer is, as usual, "it depends".

An EPS graphic contains instructions in the Postscript (PS) programming language that describe all the steps needed to draw the picture. If you send the Postscript code to a printer that can understand it, the printer executes all the instructions to draw the picture optimally for the printer's hardware, ink and paper. So, to get the best results when printing an EPS graphic, you need a Postscript-capable printer.

When such a printer (or something that can pretend to be one) is not in the picture, almost anything can happen. If the EPS graphic has a preview image, OOo can substitute that for the Postscript code. That's what happens when you export to PDF. If the EPS graphic has no preview, then the PDF will also have nothing but the outline.

You may be able to install a "PDF printer" that will accept Postscript output from OOo and convert that to a PDF file.